• pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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      3 days ago

      And Vietnam. Our military isn’t great with boots on the ground because that’s not the point. This is for making military money and that’s it.

      • just2look@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        That isn’t quite accurate. The US military is very good at killing people and destroying things. To win you need a strategy that goes beyond those things. It involves aspects outside the military. You need diplomats to coordinate and negotiate with allies, diplomats to meet and negotiate with the opposition in conflicts where that is feasible, a strategy that has end goals and a reasonable way to get to those goals, political entities to explain to the US citizenry and the world at large why the conflict is necessary, and a bunch more. The military doesn’t really do most of that, and the US hasn’t bothered with having any of those things for a long time. The problem is the US government keeps just saying to ‘conquer’ some country and giving no real sense of what that even means.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
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          3 days ago

          And making Petrobarons* spelling richer and maintaining USD hegemony through petrodollar. We invaded Iraq because Hussein was trying to convert Iraq’s UN Food-for-Oil account from petrodollar to petroeuro.

          • just2look@lemmy.zip
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            3 days ago

            That’s kind of my point. The US military is pretty good at doing what militaries are for. Its other parts of the government that decide where to point them. And where they have been pointed has been stupid/destructive/dictated by oligarchs for a long time.

    • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      They conquere Iraq and Afghanistan quite fast, what they half-heartedly tried and failed at was building a lasting regime that they didn’t directly control.